Hello Kitty Adds Beauty Salon Owner To Her Resume with This New App

Check out the latest and greatest apps for Android, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and iPhone this week.

Windows Phone App: GetThemAll

No, GetThemAll isn’t a knock-off Pokemon app – it’s a tool you can use to download anything and everything you can possibly download from any given webpage.

The app is especially useful if you want to download multiple files from a single page, or if you want to download a video from YouTube or another video hosting site. The app can download a wide variety of text, image, and video file types, and saves them all automatically to your SkyDrive.

All you need to do is open the app and use the browser to go to the page in question – the app will populate a list of files you can download from that page, and you can select which you want and which you don’t. You can use the download manager to monitor progress, then check your SkyDrive once everything has been downloaded.

Windows 8: Radio Paradise

Radio Paradise perfectly fits what’s become more or less the M.O. for Windows apps – simplicity. It’s a radio app with scant few features, and as it turns out, sometimes that’s a good thing.

Sometimes it’s nice to not have to think about what music you want to play. That’s the idea behind radio in general, and it’s the main thrust of Radio Paradise. Once you start the app, you have one option – play. You’ll jump into an ongoing, ad-free playlist curated by the app developers. The music is from a variety of genres and eras, but the songs tend to fade well into each other, and there’s a real sense of flow. There’s also a good mix of popular favorites and (good) stuff you may have never heard before.

While the music is playing, you can choose between high, medium, and low quality streaming. You can also hit a button to get more information about the song, including title, artist, album, and lyrics. In that pop-up window, you can rate the song, follow Amazon links to buy the song or album, and view comments from other Radio Paradise users. Again, it’s a simple interface, and it works well.

Radio Paradise does make like a real radio station sometimes, which isn’t always desirable. Sometimes, a DJ will chime in with the title and artist of the song previously played (despite that information being clearly displayed the whole time), and telling you what’s coming up next (also, clearly displayed). More to the point, the DJ will also occasionally remind you that Radio Paradise is available on mobile platforms. I think that is the take-home message. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen too often.

The background images are also curated to “thematically match the song being played.” This isn’t important, mostly because you’ll probably be running Radio Paradise in the background, but the images are very literal, to the point of goofiness. Oasis’ “Wonderwall” isn’t about walls, Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” isn’t about urban streets, and Arcade Fire’s “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” isn’t about mountains. The images don’t usually get the mood right, excepting serendipity, but it’s not really a problem – the images are good for a chuckle most of the time, if nothing else.

You can register for a free account if you wish – if you do, you’ll be able to use the Play Something Different button and leave comments on the songs.

iPhone App: Skyfall Gun Barrel

Well, if we’re being honest, the Skyfall Gun Barrel app is really just an ad to remind you that Skyfall is now available on DVD and Blu-ray, and that you should buy it, preferably with the link conveniently placed in the app.

Fortunately, you do not have to do that! Instead, you can have a little fun by putting yourself or your friends in the 007 gun barrel opening sequence. You’ll need to have someone capable of holding the phone steady and filming you while you make your best Bond turn-and-shoot impression. Afterwards, you can share your secret agent skills with the social media world.

Android: Hello Kitty Beauty Salon

Under the gentle face, Hello Kitty is many things. Budding business tycoon is one of them, as we can see in Hello Kitty Beauty Salon.

Hello Kitty is our newest small business owner, and is facing some serious logistical difficulties, one being that she has more customers than she can handle – probably because she’s Hello Kitty. I’m guessing she doesn’t have to allocate much to the marketing budget.

Your job is to get customers seated and deliver the services they want as fast as possible. As you earn more money, you can hire a staff of Sanrio characters, train them, and buy new equipment and upgrades for the beauty salon. There will also be seasonal themes rolled out in the future.

In-app purchases are part of the app, allowing you to buy those upgrades or new staff members with real money. You know, I’ll bet Hello Kitty doesn’t try to foist microtransactions on her customers. Just saying.

Hello Kitty Beauty Salon is available for free on Google Play and, like usual, you can get good enough at the game to enjoy it free of those in-app purchases.